Tuesday, September 20, 2011

RemembeRED: Why It's A Phobia

For this week’s memoir prompt, we’re going to let narrative take a backseat. Choose a moment from your personal history and mine it for sensory detail. Describe it to us in rich, evocative details. Let us breath the air, hear the heartbeat, the songs, feel the fabric and the touch of that moment. I will probably have nightmares about this one!


*scritch*

*scritch*

I open my eyes to darkness, pitch black, heart thudding in my chest.

What?

*scritch-scritch-scritch*

I wake up fully, and the darkness seems more ominous, more threatening.

*scritch-scritch*

It is a stealthy sound, tiptoeing. Furtive.

*scritch*

I am not afraid of the dark, I tell myself.

Is it coming closer? It is impossible to tell over the sound of my heart trying to escape from my chest.

*scritch*

My brain is frantically trying to identify that sound, that whispery scratching sound. If I don't move, maybe whatever is making that sound will go away.

*scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch*

I am not afraid of the dark, I tell myself. What concerned me was what might be IN the dark with me.

*scrit-scritch-scri---*

I have never been the kind of person to wait for approaching peril, and finally I can stand it no longer. I jump up in the darkness to find the light switch. I turn to confront the monster.

And freeze.

There, on the stack of printer paper NEXT to the bed, right NEXT to my pillow, right NEXT to where I had been sleeping...was a cockroach.

An extremely large cockroach.

5 comments:

  1. Ewwwwwww......I might have a phobia too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your post gave me chills. I HATE cockroaches. I hated my infested city apartments in college. I remember finding one in a cabinet on the day I moved into a new place, and I never opened that cabinet again the entire year. Cockroaches are so awful!

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  3. Oh noooooo!

    And ewwwwww!

    And one more oh nooooo!

    Ahem. You did your job well here! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ewww! I was picturing mice, rats, even really creepy things like... little brothers! But never a roach. That was a surprise. Yuck. I live in a mostly roach-free zone.

    Great job. You "spoke" to the phobic in me. :D

    Trish in AZ http://writinginareddress.blogspot.com/2011/09/last-day.html

    ReplyDelete
  5. Eek. I'm now scurring away on my tiptoes. In other words, well done.

    ReplyDelete

I welcome comments, but reserve the right to correct your spelling because I am OCD about it!